skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think those excerpts show any attack on C, he just doesn't like that he can't use higher level languages without sacrificing performance. Which is a position that you may disagree with, but I don't think it's an attack on C.

would love to use JavaScript from, e.g. the command prompt, outside of a browser, but it has never been easy to do that without pretending you are running a web browser (learning DOM an so forth). The language is designed for a browser.

I don't think there's anything in the language itself that is designed for the browser; it's just the standard library that is lacking.

The Rhino shell, for example, comes with functions like readFile/2 and runCommand/N which are much more adequate for that kind of programming.

But it's certainly not as useful as C, and I certainly don't use. Though I tend to use Python, not C either (ctypes is awesome).

C does not have that sort of limitation. That's all I'm saying. And C works for many purposes right now - my OS has a vast library of C functions to do all manner of things low and high level. And that's without even looking at other huge repositories on the web. Compare this with mere "theoretical" capabilities, e.g. ideas like "low level JavaScript".

Sure; I don't think anyone denies that.

That said, it's not true that those functions are closed to you if you use JavaScript; check out node-ffi: https://github.com/rbranson/node-ffi

Running JS on bare metal is, at the moment, a pipe dream, though.

Certainly you can understand my position a little, can't you? Why do so many people love Perl and Python? If we took away all the libaries (=enablement, empowerment) would they still love them as much? For what I want to do (i.e. potentially anything, from booting to browsing), C gives me ample enablement and empowerment. Self-hosting JavaScript doesn't. And if someone writes a BIOS for ARM scriptable in JavaScript, but they write some part of it in C, well, I'm still going to want to learn C before JavaScript. That's just how I think.

Sure, I can understand your position perfectly. I just don't think your portrayal of the article was fair to the author, that's all.
Show HN: Frustrated by looking for a property in the UK? This might help.
Unless it's a take-home project in which case a person could do the work on the weekend. Which would also be a test of time management.
I find 20% to be fairly substantial actually. If a certain market would be 20% of your income, would you ignore it?

(Given that it is not that hard to develop cross-platform especially since OS X is usually targeted as well.)
I haven't looked at the specs, yet, but this is what I've had in mind: Roll one out to help with deep packet inspection of some of my network traffic. Spam filtering might also be offloaded to one of these guys.

Dedicated machines to host backend applications -- SQL servers, Apache, nginx, etc.
As a sanctimonious prick who asks a lot of leading questions, I find it's very difficult to communicate technical insights with other members of my team by just giving them the answers to the hard questions.

What I'm guessing you'd like sanctimonious pricks like me to say:

"That particular (algorithm|technology decision|doohickey) is bad for the following three reasons, this alternative is better because it's !(those three reasons), is less work, easier to maintain and also offers us the following three affordances. I've used this in a number of other installations and can vouch for its reliability and ease-of-use."

This categorically does not work! Don't do it! It allows for zero shared credit, puts everyone on the defensive and leads to bickering and bike-shedding. In the best case, the person you're arguing with will disagree vehemently, go away for a few weeks, then come up with a new idea all by themselves that is exactly the same as what you were arguing for. This achieves the same result but isn't a very pleasant way to get there. Questions work marginally better.

In general my lines of questioning follow one of the following formats:

1. Is there a reason we're not using <a := some no-brainer technology choice> instead of going to all the effort of rolling our own <a>?

2. Have you thought about how that's going to work when <one or more use cases that are almost definitely going to happen that you clearly haven't thought about>?

3. Is <b> something we're just doing now to get it working and then planning on refactoring later? <where b := a horrible mess they just merged into master>

4. It looks like the script is running when I enter <script>alert('bazinga!');</script> as my username. Seeing as it's your commit that caused it would you mind taking a look at that?

In terms of sharing insight without offending people, that's about as polite as I can get I'm afraid.
"Never argue with a fool, for they will bring you done to their level and beat you with experience."
-- Somebody, somewhere

Also, don't feed the troll.
Thanks for clarifying. If you've the time, could you tell me how I should read:
non_conflicting = (g) -> ![0...9].some (i) -> g in [s[x][i], s[i][y], box i]
It's always hard when you think "I was being an arsehole at that time". Hard, but good to realise. I think I had that moment just now!

In case you think I believe I'm always an arsehole, this isn't the case. But there have been times I believe I was. I'll have to work on it in future :(
Is that an effort to merge bookmarks and Panorama?
I agree. I am totally against hiring based on either stupid interview questions or tricky programming problems you will never see again. However, I think these guys take it a bit too far.

Maybe give them a project that only takes a couple of hours, just creating a simple module that does some very basic thing. Try to find out how they work rather than the final result.
Common WordPress Malware Infections
Unfortunately chip and pin is not as secure as the industry wants you to believe. --There have been several examples of where people have modified card terminals to allow the chip and pin information to be intercepted and used elsewhere.
The Evil Engineer's Guide to Patents
Aren't movies and music culture the same way books are? Are prices fixed for them as well?

I didn't know there was such a law in place in France, so I'm curious now.

Last question: who fix the prices of books? Who has the power/authority to decide how much a book is worth?
NASA TV screencap: http://imgur.com/LKrBd
Reading through the article, I was thinking if a canvas-based photoshop-like app could be built. Is anyone aware of an article that explains the architecture of Photoshop? How pixels are processed through its stack of layers?
Interesting idea and I applaud them for reexamining basic assumptions, but I think they need to do more work on the site to convince the viewer that this concept actually works.

Issues to address include, at least:

Balance,

Gears,

Speed,

Effort
So you are one of the few happy customers who is prepared to pay for an OnLive subscription to get the benefits you listed, great for you. I can make a list of downsides of cloud gaming that would be at least as long, which are prohibitive for me to use the service.

The million dollar question is how many people there are that -like yourself- prefer paying for a service like OnLive, compared to the number of people that will simply buy their own hardware, or just use whatever hardware they already have anyway.

You can justify spending money on OnLive as much as you want, but my point was not that the service is completely useless, just that the target audience is too small to make the service profitable. Hardcore gamers build their own rigs or are prepared to buy a console once every few years, casual gamers will play on whatever they have available, people who don't play games don't care. It appears there's just not that many people who are so hell-bent on being able to play all their games, anywhere, on any platform that happens to be available, that they want to pay for a subscription service that somewhat allows them to.

I'm not really sure why I'm even debating this anymore (like I had to when OnLive just launched and got flamed by hordes of people with the same arguments like yours, because OnLive would surely be the future of gaming). I think the 'economics of OnLive' more or less have proven my point sufficiently.
If you don't like your workflow, change it. It's really as simple as that. If you can't change it, switch to a job where you can. Trying to change how other people perceive you or your job will only make it worse. Just because so many are feeling that they are stuck in a continuously endless loop of negative feedback, doesn't mean its right or the only thing there is. You, and only you, have the power to change your own mindset (for the better or worse). There's nothing that does that for you.
A Martin Gardner Sampler
EU parliament vote on EU patent court
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1orMXD_Ijbs&feature=relat...
I would enjoy making a ray-tracing GPU from one of these.

That the cores don't run in lockstep can be shader heaven! I'm imagining using the cores in a pipeline with zoning so some core 'owns' some tile of the screen and does z-buffering, and other core does clipping of graphics primitives for each tile, and a sea of compute nodes between them chew up work and push it onwards.

Some kind of using the cores as a spatial index too. Passing rays to other cores as they propagate beyond the aabb belonging to a core.

Doubtless it wouldn't work like that. And wouldn't work well. But its fun thinking about it! :)
Your questions 1 to 4 look pretty normal and I would ask those as well. The parent poster is mostly talking about people asking questions just to make themselves look better.
As Dijkstra said Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.
They have the cores and they are custom, if I read the blurb right. They already have the cores!
I'm also a backer and I've been completely surprised by the lack of interest. $99 to try what could represent the future of CPU design. I see it as a platform to really try out if the new wave of concurrent languages really make a difference on these platforms.
This is fixed in Firefox 18.
Ken Robinson did a great talk about passion, that somewhat negates this blog post...it takes a lot more than just being greatly skilled at something to be passionate about it.

https://vimeo.com/21195297
Big Switch adds Big Names to Executive Team
This is very nice, but does it breach Google's Ts&Cs with regard to business asset tracking? I only ask because I wanted to make something similar (though not India or trains)

https://developers.google.com/maps/terms section 10.2b(iii)
59% of trains delayed is not an accurate representation. IR has what is known as an operating schedule provided for intermediate stations which differs from the published schedule. The intermediate and published schedules are synchronized at major junctions along the way. The operating schedule has slack built in. A train running late by upto an hour usually arrives on or before time at major and terminating stations. A case in point right at this instance 65% of the trains are on schedule, checking during the morning hours in India will show a higher on time percentage on time as trains approach terminating stops.
Leading questions are good, I don't advocate people just telling the answer directly and I follow your approach in terms of leading questions. From the examples you give I would suggest you aren't the kind of sanctimonious pick that I was trying to describe.

The example I was giving and probably not stating clearly enough, was of a member, who on a number of occasions has approached other team members and asked questions out of context like an on the spot quiz.

As an aside to my first post it's also interesting to see the people that will openly admit whether they have messed up.

Anecdotally it is usually the people who are less willing to share their knowledge that will try and shift the blame.

BTW, I am revoking your sanctimonious prick status....
for what i want, it needs to be private, and associated with user tags (which means some logic to identify usernames). i think it's very unlikely your code (or any general annotation-sharing program) will do that, but thanks for the offer!
It's a unicycle with a front wheel.

Whilst it looks fun it also looks slow and difficult - mechanically simplified, perhaps.
Architecture reference manual can be found here: http://www.adapteva.com/support/docs/e3-reference-manual/
Very Nice! Personally, I would have loved a code example inside the post.

Thanks for going MIT.
Hear hear. I think you've done a good job crafting some questions that debunk this hokum.

Also,if you don't think it's applicable to your life, ok. But when you gripe about the questions or take umbrage with the notion that maybe, just maybe, you've forgotten (or never learned) some information that might have some practical application in the real world, you just sound defensive.

I mean, in the first thread there was a guy who was proud of not knowing what big O notation was. C'mon.
If you have to go to the net for basic things, you are going to be less productive than someone who is able to understand and use those things from memory, because of (1) the time it takes to find the information online, and (2) the interruption in flow.

The majority of his problems were things that I'd say are in the "should be in memory" category for those who work in the general area that the particular question covers.
I have immense respect for Dr Collin Percival, and his work. But isn't this getting overboard?

Seriously, calculus? I understand Collin is a computer scientist who is also programmer by co incidence. But this is almost like 'I know it, so you must too'. Most developers are likely to never ever deal with these things at all.

Programming today is so much productivity, discovery and building things. If you face these thing along the way, very well learn them. But to spend the next two years of your life learning calculus which you are likely to never use ever in your career and then only to find you are likely to forget it 2 years down the lane anyway, is a wrong way to be spending your time.

As a programmer what excites me most is a new challenge I've never faced before, And the journey of hard work, discovery, failure and success that follow from such a attempt. I don't mind failing while doing something even if I don't know much about it. I'm likely to learn them by discovering and reading new things, than spending straight 1 years learning all from a book without knowing where they will be ever used up.

The only thing that excites me besides money is the joy of discovering new things, and realizing that I might have solved a real world problem that might be helping someone. Trivia stuff doesn't excite me anymore, I don't see what and how have I changed things around me by merely just knowing more.

Life is really short, I know I have little time to make all the money I want so that I can see the other parts of life. I know coding and math are exciting, but they are among the many things that are exciting in life. Think of it this way, you might have a favorite Ice cream flavor, but unless you taste other flavors how would you ever know if others are better? Or after trying the other flavors you might just discover you have a new favorite flavor!
Ask HN: Developing public-space digital art ideas
Hi,

Does anyone have any recommendations or advice on institutions and companies that can help guide/kick start development of public-space digital art ideas?
e.g Phone apps for use in public spaces; this Rain exhibition: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19873953

Currently I have several ideas that are quite ambitious. Unfortunately, I have very little experience in how to go about getting these ideas delivered. Currently I'm based in London, if that helps in anything.

Thanks
RSA splits passwords in two to foil hacker attacks
10.2c(iii) is pretty clear that this use is explicitly allowed:

"you may use the Google Maps API(s) to track assets such as cars, buses or other vehicles, as long as your tracking application is made available to the public without charge. For example, you may offer a free, public Maps API Implementation that displays real-time public transit or other transportation status information.)"
"please contact the Google Maps API for Business sales team"
I'm pretty sure they did exactly that and got a green light.
I see very few questions relevant to being able to ship software... interesting for precisely that reason though.
Imagine Apple was asshole free from the start? It would have failed, the reality is to succeed you need to make tough decisions and people will come across an asshole (ohherrr) at some point.

Also if you worked in a place where everyone was nice all you would likely want to blow your brains out.
OSS License Combiner Tool
Shorter paper: the half-life of DNA sequences in bone is around 520 years. "Jurassic Park" just got holed below the waterline. (Resurrecting wooly mammoths from frozen soft tissues samples is another matter: the process of DNA degradation is temperature-dependent. This finding relates to DNA extracted from bone samples of Moas from New Zealand at an average temperature of around 13 celsius.)
Yes, since Firefox 15.
You're welcome!

I didn't think about the code example in the post... maybe I'll add it and resubmit the post ;)
<snark>Meh, this is Bitcoin. If it takes more than one bored teenager with some off-the-shelf SQL injection tools to abscond with my money, that's better than expected.</snark>

More seriously, the threats faced by a real bank are more serious than the threats faced by a minor Bitcoin operation.

That said, there's no way I'm trusting any significant amount of money to any of these outfits.
New awesome tricky feature on CSS position:sticky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_sovereignty

Makes me interested to see what the treaties say as I'd be surprised it no one thought to limit the control of countries to allow satellites to pass without permission or allow space vehicles in general.

Though as you point out there is the Karman line convention.
Perhaps someone more experienced can enlighten me; does this really constitute fair use under US copyright law?

Also, even if it meets the requirements for fair use in the US, is this project not still wide open to copyright infringement claims from abroad?

As far as I'm aware there are no fair use (or 'fair dealing' as it is here) provisions in the UK that permit the archiving and distribution of copyrighted works without the permission of the copyright holder.
"That particular (algorithm|technology decision|doohickey) is bad for the following three reasons, this alternative is better because it's !(those three reasons), is less work, easier to maintain and also offers us the following three affordances. I've used this in a number of other installations and can vouch for its reliability and ease-of-use.

This categorically does not work"

meh, if that gets the job done faster then say it. The chance of a 20 minute argument vs a weeks long delay? I'll take the 20 minute argument.

But then again, leading questions get my back up. I'm a "say what you mean, don't hint at it" type.

If I get offended because someone else knows better and tells me so without being rude, then it's my problem (and my insecurity), not theirs.
The race to build utopian city-states in the jungles of Honduras
What are the most interesting open-source projects in AI and ML?
Ask HN: Review my App: List App with live collaboration.
I am a manufacturer by profession and for my day to day activity I needed a to do list that can have some calculation ability.
My budget did not allow for ERP etc. I created this app for my personal use and added feature one by one.
Because I am not a professional programmer I wanted to take review from fellow community before I commit any more time or resource to develop more than I need.
Any criticism is welcome. Questions are also welcome. Thanks.

www.inqzin.com

workflow of using this is.

1) Create Organization.

2) Add comments.

3) Comments are hierarchical.

4) you can also #tag them for quick filtering.

5) Cut-Paste moving of comment is allowed. ( drag and drop too.)

6) simple calculation are allowed. check out screenshots.

7) Each comment have access to its children comments.

8) Comments are live. i.e. if your coworker edit it you can see it instantly.
Mujicomp and why everything is like it is
I did something a little bit similar when I made www.eaisy.com. I like a minimal interface.
OH yeah! I successfully got my girls ready and off to school on time this morning. I'd like to see the ISS crew pull that off!
GMail SMS - Text capabilities from GMail
Once you decide to do A/B-testing you only need to know enough about probability to know that it is very hard to guess the amount of traffic needed. That's when you google to remind yourself how to do the actual calculations.
Really greate work!!!!!
Well

Some think crypto is essential. Some think it's merely a tool and even though having guidance in using these tools is important, no need to go to a lot of details.

I could point out a lot of mathematics that are important as well and 99% of devs there are oblivious to it.

- Newton-Raphson method

- Gaussian elimination

- Simplex method

- Z transform

- Bezier curves

- Linear algebra in general

- Galois fields
Is there a particular reason you are using Hawk.def and Hawk.gen instead of something more "traditional" like

Bird = Hawk.create(...)
falcon = new Bird(...)

How do you deal with inheritance?

falcon insteanceof Bird; // => is it true?

If bird had mixins would falcon be an instanceof those as well?
More importantly, you don't know what you don't know. If you don't have something in memory, even though that knowledge is readily available on the web, you probably won't notice an opportunity to apply that knowledge. That said, while I can answer these questions, they are pretty specialized knowledge. It's is a common phenomenon to think that the specialized area you work in is a big part of the world because you spend so much time in it. People should not feel bad about not knowing the answers to these questions. A web developer doesn't need to know any of these things, and he would be able to come up with web development questions that would be equally hard to answer if don't happen to be in that area (e.g. In which browsers is css-property-foo supported? or: what is faster, setting innerHTML or inserting a new elment into the DOM?). Even within the area of computer science, the author is asking specialized questions about hardware, security and algorithms. If it was about machine learning, type systems, and parsing you'd have a completely different set of questions. Or it could have been about computer graphics, compiler optimization, human computer interaction, and programming languages.